Its the last week of the month, so on Tuesday I headed over to the William IV at Kensal Green for their monthly open mic. And with brand-spanking new material to boot!

I have this irritating habit of getting bored with material too quickly. I do something for a few months, then feel like I'm cheating by not having written anything new lately. I felt like challenging myself a little this time, so I gave myself a week to come up with a new five minutes to put into rotation.

The week passed all too quickly, and I'd managed not to actually rehearse this new set before Tuesday's spot, so I spent the tube journey over (thankfully a fairly long one) writing notes on my hand, and making a few last-minute adjustments.

The audience was mostly acts for the first half, but, true to form at the William IV, really supportive. I don't think anyone before me had had a bad gig. This helped me drag out a little bit of extra energy when I was on stage, which I needed to really get the most out of what might be shaky material.

I started with a pretty safe opening gag, one I've been doing for ages. Its worked quite well the last few times I've used it and I'm even managing to get some good laughs just from some gestures and expressions, which has taken ages to get the hang of. I'm on the verge of cutting out an additional afterthought that's now seeming quite redundant. This helped get everyone on my side for the new stuff, which went down reasonably well. There were some places where people laughed when I didn't expect it, but most of the gags worked. Room for improvement, but there's something there for sure.

Annoyingly there was a tiny bit of heckling, which wrecked a gag I was quite keen to try. Not that there weren't any laughs at all at that point, but most of it came from the guy in the audience chipping in. It was all friendly, and I'm sure he thought he was helping. Luckily, my incredulous reaction to it all got everyone back on my side (self-deprecating though it was), and I managed to put him in his place a tad with some later audience interaction. Granted what I said wasn't particularly funny, but in context (my desperation that he not mouth off again) it got a great laugh. Got some great comments from other acts afterwards as well. I think I'm really starting to find my feet, and pulling together something of a consistent stage persona.

So this routine's going in the full rotation. I've even got some short-form jokes in there to pop into other places should I need it. Lessons learned? Don't be afraid to try stuff out. You don't need to be witty to put down a heckler, as long as you have ok timing. And comparing anything to a penis is funny.